Today’s Scripture Reading (January 4,
2014): Isaiah 61
In 1948,
political and economic differences between the four administrators of the city
of Berlin caused a physical division within the city. It was three against one,
leaving the Soviet Union to stand alone. But the Soviets felt that they had a
very powerful card to play. While the other three German administrators (the
United States, the United Kingdom, and France) may have held most of Berlin,
there were some very historical and important parts of the Berlin that were
under Soviet control. And the entire city of Berlin was also physically
situated within the area controlled by the Soviet Union. Eventually these
differences resulted in the division of the nation in two, East Germany made up
of portion of the country that was under the administration of the Soviet Union,
and West Germany, consisting of the combined administrative areas of the United
States, the United Kingdom, and France. The other significant result was that a
wall was constructed by the Soviet Union - totally blockading West Berlin, separating
it from the rest of the country.
This divide
in Germany has since then become symbolic of the Cold War that existed between
the Soviet Union and what is politically referred to as the West from the end
of the Second World War until the late 1980’s. And the emotional symbol of that
division was the Berlin Wall. For a child of the cold war, it is was almost
impossible to imagine that one day the wall would fall. And yet the wall did
fall. The impossible became possible on November 9, 1989 – and East and West
Germany were reunified into a single Germany in 1990.
Isaiah
presents a Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 61. In the prophecy he speaks of the
removal of what is probably the most prominent division of his day – the division
that separated the priests and the laity (or the non-priests). In Isaiah’s
culture, it was the priests (a hereditary position) that were responsible for
all of the tasks that the running of the temple required. Different priests
were responsible for different activities, but if you were not born into a
priestly family, then you were not allowed to perform tasks in the temple. The
division was a hard one and there were no exceptions.
But Isaiah
tells of a day when even that division would disappear. It would have been as
hard (or maybe harder) for people of Isaiah’s day to imagine that the
difference between a priest and non-priest could disappear than it would have
been for a child of the Cold War to believe that the Berlin Wall could ever
come down. And yet, as quickly as the Berlin Wall came down, the division
between the priest and the laity also disappeared. And the symbolic event that
ushered in this Messianic day of the Lord was when the curtain that functioned
as the dividing wall that separated the Holy of Holies and the rest of the
temple was torn in two by an earthquake at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. When
that wall came down, that event changed our reality.
We are all
priests. We all have access to approach God – and we
all have been given responsibilities in the faith. We are not all the same, but
each one of us has a divinely ordained purpose in the faith given to us by God.
And in that sense, every one of us is a priest.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah
62
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